China holds 'Red Games'

A wounded soldier lies motionless on the ground awaiting rescue, his head
swathed in blood-stained bandages, while all around him the air is filled
with a great hue and cry.

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A competitor dressed in revolutionary era PLA outfit crawls under 'barbed-wire' carrying a 'bomb' in the 'Bomb the Blockhouse' event at the 'Red Games'Photo: ADAM DEAN

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A competitors dressed as a revolutionary farmer pushes a wheel barrow on the 'battlefield'Photo: ADAM DEAN

By By Peter Foster in Linyi

6:55PM BST 29 Aug 2010

To the rear a gun fires and two tunic-clad female comrades arrive at full-tilt, seizing the man by his underarms and ankles and dumping him unceremoniously on a crude stretcher. To further cheers, they hurtle off with their casualty bouncing perilously between them.

Welcome to China’s 'Red Games’, a kind of Olympics for nostalgic Communists looking to rekindle the spirit of a bygone age when millions of ordinary Chinese fought for, and eventually won, China’s Communist revolution.

Staged in Junan County in the eastern province of Shandong, a celebrated Red Army base during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45, the Games are a bold attempt to foster a bit of comradely backbone in modern China’s increasingly materialistic society.

Some 38 teams from 17 provinces across China competed in the inaugural Games, modeled on the Olympics, complete with torch relay from the old revolutionary base at Yan’an, cuddly toy mascot and an opening ceremony song-and-dance spectacular - but with revolutionary Red songs, of course.

“Without the Party, there can be no new China,” intoned the master of ceremonies as lasers and fireworks lit up the sky, with Mao Xinyu, the grandson of the late Chairman Mao looking on approvingly.

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Formalities over, the athletes lined up for events including the 40m grenade toss, the 100m shoulder-pole race and the 'storming of the enemy blockhouse’, in which participants run 25m, crawl 5m under 'barbed’ wire (a set of old bed springs) and run 50m through a 'mine field’ of traffic cones to the finishing line.

“We hope to bring back the pure spirits of the revolutionaries,” says 30-year-old Zeng Zhihua, her chest still heaving from her exertions in the stretcher race, “although we live in modern times we need the Red values of persistence, fearlessness and endurance in the face of hardship.” It is difficult to know if such revolutionary zeal will really, as the organizers hope, find resonance with China’s younger generation which is mostly pre-occupied with long hours of academic study or factory work and playing online computer games with friends.

Over at the grenade pitch, 19-year-old Shi Yunfei, an aspiring decathlete who recently started at university, says he isn’t much influenced by the idea of Red ideals. “I came to take part and have fun,” he said, “I think it’s the government that really pays attention to promoting Red values.” In recent years, as China feels the strains and inequalities thrown up by its uneven economic miracle, the authorities have searched self-consciously searched for a viable thread — part Confucian, part old fashioned loyalty to the Party — with which to help bind a fractured society.

Last year Bo Xilai, the party secretary of the sprawling city of Chongqing, a municipality of 30m people riddled with corruption scandals, sent 30m “Red” text messages with his favourite sayings of Mao Tse-tung in a bid to rejuvenate morale in the city.

Chinese television stations have run talent competitions for the best singers of revolutionary songs, while the state-run film industry is churning out patriotic anniversary epics — last year on the 60th of the founding of the Republic, and next year on the 90th of the Communist Party itself.

Whether the Red Games can bring something to China’s ruling Party remains to be seen, but if nothing else, they should contribute to the rise in Red tourism, as more Chinese have money to tour the famous battlefields and Long March sites that they all learned about in school.

That is certainly the hope of one of the local women in revolutionary costume sitting sewing shoes 'for the soldiers’. “We were asked to come by the family planning committee,” said Zhao Yixia, who runs a local grocery story, “the games are good. More tourists means more business.” Zuo Yuhe, professor of modern history at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, thinks the two aims — boosting tourism and revolutionary patriotism — are not mutually exclusive.

“The Games are about pushing the local tourist economy, but they do also publicise Red culture,” he said, “It is good to attain two advantages by a single move. Furthermore, I believe that as time goes by, these kinds of Red activities will become more than just an economic pursuit, and turn into a new fashion.” Back in the grandstands, where a troop of local schoolchildren cheer on the field in the Yan’an spinning-wheel race (50m dash, spin 50m of yarn and sprint another 50m), the teenaged girls and boys seem to be having too much fun to worry too much about the meaning of Red values.

But their maths teacher, 50-year-old Yan Jiasen, believes it isn’t such a bad idea. “The children need to learn their history,” he says, “they live in such comfortable times now, they know nothing of the hardships of the old days and we should teach them something of those hardships, and how to tolerate them.”